Wedding Survey Reveals You’d Better Start Saving for the Big Day Now

Before you walk down the aisle, you may want to walk down to the bank to make sure you’ve got enough money in your account.

A new survey of 17,500 women married last year sheds some hard-to-believe light on just how much weddings cost.

Hold on to your bouquet because the average wedding cost $28,427 – and that’s without taking the honeymoon into account. The most expensive place to tie the knot is New York City’s Manhattan, where it’ll set you back a whopping $76,678. Conversely, Alaska is home of the cheapest average weddings, at $15,504.

The average wedding dress checks in at $1,211 and the blushing bride will wear that in front of 139 guests, since that’s how many people attend the typical wedding.

The most popular month to get engaged is February, with 16% of respondents saying that’s when they received a proposal. June is traditionally thought of as the most popular month to get hitched and the survey did little to change that stereotype. It led all months, courtesy of the 17% who took the plunge then.

Nearly a quarter of all respondents said they had a destination wedding.

The average bride is 29 years old and the average groom is 31, which means you'll have plenty of years ahead of you to pay off the cost of the big day.